


Red and Black Lines

by animeangelriku



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animeangelriku/pseuds/animeangelriku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red tally marks mean an unrequited love that will eventually pass in the same way the marks will disappear. But a black tally mark means you have met your soul mate. Chris has only ever gotten red tally marks, but when he starts his first year of college and meets Darren Criss, he can't help but continuously glance down at his bare wrist... and hope for a tally mark of either color to appear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red and Black Lines

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Secret CrissColfer Unicorn Gift Exchange!

Chris was just beginning his first year of college when he met Darren Criss.

It was kind of an accident, really. An acquaintance of his (because no matter what Ashley said, they had just met, they _weren’t_ friends) dragged him to some stupid play the Dramatic Arts seniors were putting on as a homecoming kind of thing for the freshmen. 

_If we can’t get you to at least CONSIDER us as a future major,_ the flyer said, _then we’re not doing a good job!_

Chris tried to sneak out before the play started. He wasn’t interested, he had other things to do, and, most importantly, he didn’t want to be there. But Ashley, curse her, hooked her arm through his, and the Psychology sophomore wouldn’t let him go. She hadn’t actually let go of him since she had seen him “wandering around like a lost puppy”—or so she said—and taken him under her wing. Completely against his will. He wasn’t lost, he had been _exploring_ campus, _god._

He felt like Ashley was his mother, and he didn’t see how or _why_ she considered them to be friends. He certainly wasn’t friends with his mother. But he knew that trying to get out of seeing the play would only result in a bruise to his arm, so he crossed his arms over his chest—a movement Ashley deemed _rude_ , since she was still holding onto one of his arms—and leaned back against his uncomfortable seat in the small college theater. 

At least, with her arm looped through his, he couldn’t see the black tally mark and the name on her wrist. He could also stop himself from looking at his own bare wrist, where only red tally marks had been before they vanished. 

The lights went out. The curtains opened.

And there he was.

Standing in the middle of the stage, with a stage light pointed at him, was one of the Dramatic Arts seniors: he had short, black curly hair, and he was dressed in a shirt with the university logo and black pants with tennis shoes. Some girls from the upper and lower rows (Chris and Ashley were sitting somewhere in the middle) started yelling and cheering and clapping. The guy smiled—albeit shyly—and slightly bowed his head.

 _Great,_ Chris thought, rolling his eyes. Not only had he been dragged here against his will, but he probably wouldn’t get to watch the play if this guy was part of it. He couldn’t stand screaming people. 

“Hi! How’s it going, everyone?” the guy greeted the audience, and the girls yelled again. “I wanna thank you all for being here to support the Dramatic Arts major, which is, sadly, a little underpopulated at the moment. But we put everything we had into making this play, so hopefully you’ll like it. And now, without further ado, the Dramatic Arts seniors present—”

Chris stopped listening to him by then. If this group of seniors knew anything about the narrative in a play, they’d know that titles were important, and that, most of the time, they gave the story away if one was careful enough to pay attention. And if Chris was going to stay here, he didn’t want to be spoiled. Better do this right than half-assed, he thought. 

Halfway through the play, Chris was close to crying tears of laughter. 

“I didn’t know you actually had a sense of humor!” Ashley told him for the fifth time, patting his arm. “I told you you’d enjoy this!”

She had never said such thing, but he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. 

The guy who had greeted them at the beginning was the main character, and it wasn’t so much that he did stupid things; what had Chris laughing like a maniac was the dialogue and the interactions between the main character and the rest of the cast. He was a sucker for that, and he hated to admit that he was glad Ashley had dragged him here. He was actually having a good time.

In the intermission between the first and second act, Ashley started chatting with the guy sitting next to her. While Chris tried to disentangle her arm from his to go to the restroom (well, he didn’t need to go, but he did need to stretch his legs for a bit), the curly-haired guy appeared on the edge of Chris’s row and waved at Ashley, who waved back at him and called him over. 

“C’mere, Darren, come and give me a hug!”

‘Darren’ grinned widely and made his way through the seats, which were mostly empty, until he was standing almost right in front of Chris. The first thing Chris noticed about him was that he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and he decided not to judge the choice. He knew that a lot of people covered their arms, whether to hide their tally marks or to hide the fact that they didn’t have any. Chris had been like that himself before he left home, but he’d gotten tired of it. If anyone gave him any shit about his lack of tally marks, he wasn’t going to care anymore. 

Darren gave him a small curtsy with his head, as if he were some centuries-old gentleman trapped in the body of a twenty-first century college senior, and then he turned towards Ashley. 

“Hey, Ash!” he said, and when Ashley stood up, she dragged Chris up with her, their arms still annoyingly linked together. 

“Hi, baby,” Ashley said as she leaned in to kiss Darren’s cheek. “This is my friend, Chris!” Chris did a little bow with his head as his introduction. 

“Hey, Chris,” Darren said, and he held out his hand. “I’m Darren.” Chris wanted to say, _she’s not my friend, we’re acquaintances,_ but he bit the words back as he shook Darren’s hand with his own. 

“Nice to meet you, Darren. I’m Chri—”

The minute their fingers touched, Chris felt something similar to electricity rushing throughout his entire body, as if Darren’s skin was a lightning bolt and Chris’s was a puddle of water. Ashley, her arm still tangled up with his, didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Apparently, Darren felt exactly the same thing as Chris did, because both of them pulled back almost immediately. 

_Now_ Ashley noticed something was wrong.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked them, her head turning from Chris to Darren, back and forth, like she was watching a tennis match. 

Chris looked down at his hand, expecting it, for some reason, to be smoking, as if he had been electrocuted. But his hand was perfectly fine, though he felt like he’d gotten a cramp on it, so he slowly flexed his fingers before straightening them. When Chris looked up to see if Darren was doing the same, Darren also glanced up, and their eyes met. 

For a second, Chris stopped hearing Ashley worriedly asking if they were okay. He stopped hearing all the speaking and murmuring around them. The entire theater vanished around him, and he was left standing in front of Darren, both of them wearing the same surprised look on their faces: _what the hell just happened?_

“Y-yeah,” Chris stumbled. “Yeah, I just…” He looked down at his hand again. “I… I must’ve caught some static from the seats.”

“Yeah,” Darren agreed, his easy, natural smile returning. “I’ve… been running in and out of the stage, I probably caught some, too.”

The seats weren’t made of metal, they were made out of plastic, and there was no rug anywhere near the stage, nothing that could create any static or pass some to them, and they both knew it. 

But neither of them said anything about it. 

“Ooooo _kay_ ,” said Ashley, patting Chris’s arm before she patted Darren’s. “Chris here was telling me how much he’s enjoying the show!”

Chris turned to glare murderously at her—what did she _think_ she was doing?—but Darren laughed, and his smile widened into a grin. How could he do that so easily? Chris couldn’t smile or laugh unless he found something amusing, at least, and this guy gave out both like it was his natural state. Like he had been born laughing and grinning instead of crying. Chris shook his head; a laughing baby was too creepy a picture. 

“Really?” Darren asked him. “Enough to get you to consider us as a major, at least?”

Chris smiled despite himself. Something about being around Darren made it easier, like all the happiness he gave out was absorbed by the people surrounding him. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. 

“Not even a little bit?” Darren asked, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“Sorry,” Chris said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m already in Literature.”

“You could study Dramatic Arts after you graduate in Literature,” Darren said, and he tilted his head towards Chris, as if getting inside Chris’s personal space would convince him to do whatever Darren suggested. 

“I don’t know,” Chris said. “I want to minor in English Literature, and maybe I can get a master’s degree and a PhD later on or something. I mean, I _did_ consider Dramatic Arts in junior year, but it never really worked out.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Still, you never know.”

“Well, at least I hope you can stop by to see future productions of us seniors. And future productions of the department in general.”

“Depends on how _this_ production turns out.”

Darren narrowed his eyes, but he was still smiling. Chris realized he didn’t find it as strange anymore. It would’ve been weirder to him if Darren suddenly _stopped_ smiling. “I thought you said you were liking it so far?”

Technically, Ashley had been the one to let Darren know this, but Chris couldn’t really argue. 

“There’s still the second act,” he said. 

He didn’t mean for it to sound like a challenge, but the glint in Darren’s eyes clearly told him otherwise: _Challenge accepted._ Chris wondered, for a second, if Darren was capable of changing things at the last minute just so that he would impress him. Well, not _him_ , per say, but the whole production… though that glint in his eyes seemed to tell a whole other story. 

“Very well,” Darren said, nodding his head. “I should get back, it’s about to start.”

“Good luck, baby,” Ashley said, and she kissed Darren’s cheek before softly patting it with her hand. 

Inexplicably, Chris felt a strange surge of jealousy, and the words, _Get your hands off him, don’t you have your soul mate already?_ formed in his mind before he could really think about them. God, where had _that_ come from? What was it to him if Ashley had her soul mate already? She could be as affectionate as she wanted to with her friends and he had no right to judge her because of that. Wasn’t that how most girls were, anyway? Besides, it wasn’t like Chris had a crush on this guy after two minutes of talking to him. Contrary to what his so-called “friends” back in high school thought, he didn’t fall in love with every single man he met. 

“See you guys after the end.” Darren waved his hand at them and made his way back to the stage, where he disappeared behind the curtain just as Ashley pulled Chris back to their seats.

*

Ashley had said, “I’ll be right back” ten minutes into the second and last act of the play. 

And ten minutes after the end of the play, she still wasn’t back. Not that Chris was particularly worried about her, she had been in this campus for over a year now. But he had, unfortunately, assumed she would direct him back to his dorm, given that she hadn’t let him out of her sight during the entire day. Chris could always ask for directions. He knew where his dorm room was, just… not how to get back there from the college theater. 

Ashley would come back. Right now, he wanted to think about how much he had enjoyed the Dramatic Arts seniors’ production.

Damn, that had been some good acting. Good _everything,_ really: the story, the dialogue, the pace of the scenes, not to mention the songs, and the choreography, and the lighting and the scenery and the wardrobe and the distribution of space and the _metaphors_ , god damn it, how had they even _thought_ of a way to represent the metaphors without ever saying, _Hey, this is a metaphor?_

Chris would have loved to be there when they had planned and rehearsed this; not as an actor, just… just to observe the process. It must have been fascinating.

As he was practically drooling over his clothes, he caught sight of Darren jumping down the stage. Some people crowded around him, and he talked to each and every single one of them with a smile on his face. How could he do that? He had just danced and sung for almost an hour and he still had the energy to be nice to people. Back in high school, whenever a play was over and Chris’s parents wanted to talk with him about it, he had to physically restrain himself from saying, _I’m tired as hell, fuck off._ Hannah made it a lot easier: she never pestered him with questions like their parents did. She was the only one he was truly patient with, had always been.

Before Chris could realize Darren had gotten away from his crowd, the guy was skipping up the steps of the theater, making his way towards Chris. 

“So,” he said before he had stopped skipping. “Did you like it?” Darren had his hands behind his back, kind of like a little kid, and Chris wondered if he was actually a little kid magically trapped in a twenty-something-year-old’s body. 

Chris tried not to smile. “I don’t know…”

Darren’s face simply _fell_ so comically that Chris let out a little laugh before he covered his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Dude!” Darren cried. “I mean, if you didn’t like it, I can get that, everyone’s got different tastes and all that stuff.”

“I suppose,” Chris said, clearing his throat to regain his composure. 

“But, okay, you’re a Literature major, right?”

“Barely,” he said. “I haven’t even had my first class yet.”

“Okay, but you still know a lot about it, right? You wouldn’t have gotten here if you didn’t know a lot about it,” Darren said. Chris only nodded. He didn’t want to brag, but he _did_ know a lot about literature in general. Of course, he could never know everything, but then again, who could? It was enough to get him accepted into this college. “So, can you at least tell me what you didn’t like? Story-wise? Or generally-wise, if you want. We’ve always got room for improvement, but we often do it randomly, like, from hearing people’s conversations. Maybe if we knew _exactly_ what was wrong—”

Oh. Wow. Chris didn’t know Darren would take his comment that seriously. He supposed he could let Darren ramble on and on and on about how he only wanted the Dramatic Arts students to be as amazing as they could so that more people would want to try it for their major, but he also supposed that would be a bit cruel, considering he had actually _liked_ the play.

“Darren, Darren, Darren,” Chris said, touching one of Darren’s arms until he stopped talking. He thought he’d feel a little prick on his hand because of what had happened when they’d tried to shake hands, but he felt nothing. Perhaps it _had_ been static, after all. No reason to make a fuss about it. “I liked the show.”

“Wait, you…” Darren’s eyes lit up as if Chris had told him that Santa Claus really did exist, and his smile was so bright, it could probably power all of the stage lights by itself. “You did?”

“Are you kidding?” Chris said. “I nearly cried during that last scene.”

“Seriously?” Darren asked, apparently befuddled. Then he narrowed his eyes, but his smile remained. “No, you didn’t.” 

“I honestly did,” Chris replied, even though it hurt him to admit it. Only a few plays had gotten him teary-eyed, and this had been one of them. “I’ll probably have some suggestions, though that’ll be tomorrow, I think. For now, I can only tell you that I really, honest-to-God liked it.”

Darren suddenly laughed, and his laughter was so loud that Chris almost wondered if he had missed some joke. “I guess that’s fair,” he said. “I gotta get back now, but I’ll see you around?”  
Chris didn’t understand what the point of asking such a thing was. “Yeah, sure,” he said. They were both students here, after all. 

“Okay,” said Darren. “Then I’ll see you around.”

And he skipped away towards the stage, most likely to tell the rest of the Dramatic Arts seniors that this random guy he had just met had liked their production. 

For some reason, Chris found himself smiling at that thought. 

When he left the small college theater, Ashley was waiting for him outside.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked her.

“I got caught up talking to a friend,” she said, but something in her voice told Chris she was lying.

He decided to let it slip.

“So, what did you think?”

“About what?”

Ashley rolled her eyes at him. “About the play, silly.”

“Oh. I liked it.”

“Yeah?” she said, raising an eyebrow in a way that made Chris uncomfortable. Hannah used to do that when he was in middle school, whenever a red tally mark appeared on his wrist and she tried to get him to tell her whose it was. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I liked it.”

“Okay,” Ashley said.

She said nothing else about the play—or Darren—as she showed Chris around and accompanied him to his dorm room. 

“Welcome to college, Chris,” she told him as he walked into his room and looked at the emptiness that would belong to him for four years. He had requested a single dorm, and he’d been one of the lucky ones to get one. “We’re glad to have you with us, and we hope you enjoy your stay.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Are you on some sort of welcoming committee?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she smiled and said, “You could say so,” before promptly shutting the door closed behind him. 

*

Chris ran into Darren the very next day. 

His first class of the year was about to start: Law. Some seats on the top rows were empty, so Chris decided to take one of those, even though it meant he’d have to wear his glasses. The professor hadn’t arrived yet, but that only gave other students more chance to get there on time. Chris had been hearing stories about this professor all morning from sophomores, juniors, and seniors who had all taken classes with him: apparently, once he entered the room, he closed the door and didn’t allow anyone else to get in. But if he got to class after the bell rang, he didn’t take attendance. 

Some students rushed into the classroom, panting and gasping for air. Some of them had their arms covered, some of them didn’t. Chris wondered how many of his fellow classmates had red tally marks, how many had black tally marks, and how many didn’t have any marks at all. He was reminded of Hannah, who’d never had a tally mark in her entire life and didn’t care whether she got one or not.

He allowed himself one small glance at his left bare wrist. 

“Everyone, please take a seat.”

Chris looked up at the front of the classroom, where the teacher—a guy that seemed to be in his forties, his sleeves folded up to the elbows—had left his material for the class on the desk, and he was making his way to the door to close it and begin the lesson.

Right before the door was shut, one last student slipped through, immediately throwing his arms into the air and yelling, “I MADE IT!”

The teacher didn’t seem impressed in the slightest. “Well done, Mr. Criss,” he said, though he didn’t sound very complimenting. “Now please take a seat.”

Darren smiled and exhaled loudly, as if he’d been holding his breath, and he looked around for an empty seat. Chris realized that the one next to him wasn’t occupied, so he raised his arm to wave Darren over. Darren immediately caught sight of him, and he grinned widely as he made his way to the row where Chris was.

“Hey,” he whispered when he sat down next to Chris, since the professor had begun the lesson already. 

“Hey,” Chris whispered back. He thought that the Dramatic Arts senior would want to make small chat with him, but to his surprise, Darren only smiled at him and turned his attention to the front of the room. 

Once Law was done, Darren began to make the small chat Chris had somewhat been expecting. 

“So,” he began, “what’d you think about your first college class?”

“It was okay,” Chris said, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, right now, it still felt like any other class back in high school. With less people, of course, but still.”

“You’ll get used to it soon,” Darren assured him. “I think everybody feels like that when they first get here. But by the end of the semester, you’ll be running from your dorm room to get here on time.”

Chris couldn’t help the smile that overtook his face. “I don’t oversleep.” 

Darren mirrored the smile, although it looked more like a smirk to Chris. “We’ll see about that.”

Chris tried not to stare at the long sleeves Darren was wearing again. He had no right to judge someone he had just met. “What’re you doing in Law, anyway? I thought it wasn’t obligatory for all the majors.”

“It isn’t,” Darren answered. “But extra credits are always a huge boost in the end. And I really like this class.”

“I don’t think the teacher likes you very much.”

“That’s because he’s used to me making my grand entrances right at the last second.”

Chris raised a questioning eyebrow. “Grand entrances?”

The bell rang again, marking the beginning of the next class, and Darren cursed under his breath. “Gotta go,” he said. “But I’ll tell you about my grand entrances some other day.”

Then he skipped down the steps until he was at ground level and ran out of the classroom. 

*

“You did _not._ ”

“I swear, I did!”

“Yeah, right!”

“There were eye witnesses, talk to them!”

“Okay, okay.” Chris took a few seconds to stop laughing, and he took another sip from his coffee, which was already a lot colder than when he’d ordered it. “You want me to believe that you actually _threw_ yourself into the classroom so that the professor didn’t lock you out?”

“Like a ninja,” Darren repeated. 

“How is that even _possible_?”

“I told you,” Darren said, and he cleared his throat, exactly as he had done a few minutes ago when he’d told the story for the first time. “I overslept, which is something that you will _eventually_ start doing. Don’t give me that look, you smartass. Anyway, so I overslept, and I had like, five minutes to get to this guy’s class. So there I go, running through the hallways, with this epic song playing in the background, along with a montage of me generally being kick-ass. Soon, I see the door, right on the other side of the hall, and I know I only have precious time before the professor closes the door. So I break into a sprint, thinking, _I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna make it!_ Then the door starts closing. I don’t think I’m gonna make it! Unless I somehow manage to get inside the classroom before that door is shut. So I give myself the chance to stop a little, bend my knees, and I _throw_ myself, like a ninja, may I repeat—” 

Darren even threw his arms out in front of him, as if he wanted to recreate the moment for Chris.

“Into the lecture room, and my feet barely make it inside without being chopped off by the door. _Ta-da_! I stand up and I’m received by applause.” He bowed down his head repeatedly, muttering, “Thank you, thank you, you’re a wonderful crowd.”

Chris burst into laughter again, and he was glad that he’d only drunk a little of his coffee. Otherwise he would’ve spilled it through his nose, and he didn’t want to make that big an idiot out of himself in front of a guy who claimed to be a ninja. 

“I still find it a little hard to believe,” he said once he had regained his breath.

“I know,” said Darren. “I’d find it hard to believe if I hadn’t done it myself.”

“I think I’m going to talk to some of those ‘eyewitnesses’ of yours to confirm this story,” said Chris.

“Fine! Go ahead!” Darren leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Everything I said is true.”

“Including the epic song and the montage in the background?”

“Especially those.” 

Chris grinned, barely holding back another fit of laughter, and soon Darren was smiling, too, and the two of them were grinning like idiots. The only difference was that Chris was trying to hide it behind his hand and Darren was proudly showing it off. 

“You’re insane,” Chris said, not for the first time since he had met Darren.

But Darren, just like always, nodded at his words. He probably took them for a compliment. Chris didn’t know if he meant them as a compliment _now_. “I need to be a little crazy to be a Dramatic Arts major, Chris.”

Chris only shook his head, and his grin turned into a soft smile that had slowly become more and more common on him. 

*

Even if they didn’t have any classes together, Chris kept running into Darren whenever he walked around campus. Whether he went to the cafeteria, or to catch a production put on by the Dramatic Arts students, or to the library, he somehow always crossed paths with Darren.

At first he thought the guy was stalking him or following him around. He didn’t mind Darren’s company, and whenever they hung out together, he actually had a great time, but he needed his own damn space. That was why he’d asked for a single dorm room instead of a shared one on his application. But then he realized that Darren was just as surprised to see him as Chris was, and he probably thought Chris was stalking _him_. 

They just… happened to coincide when they left their dorm rooms to go anywhere. 

So while they headed to their respective destinations, they often walked together for a while, making small talk between them.

“Don’t you get lonely sometimes? I mean, must be rough being alone all the time.”

“No, I’m fine. I shared a room back home with my sister, so I actually just want my own space for a few months at a time. Besides, I keep bumping into you, so I’m not as lonely as you’d think.” 

“You have a sister?”

“Yeah, a couple years younger. You got any siblings?”

“An older brother.”

“How about your roommate?”

“Ah, he’s cool. Well, he’s barely inside the room. He’s majoring in Art, and they get asked to do a lot of shit in a really short time span, so I don’t get to see him all that much.”

“Don’t _you_ get lonely then?”

“Well, I keep bumping into you.”

Then they often shared a smile before parting ways. 

Chris liked being around Darren. It had been a really long time since he’d felt so comfortable with someone. He was slowly warming up to Ashley, who hung out with them sometimes. She had never brought her soul mate along, thank god, but the knowledge that she had one didn’t help Chris with the irrational surges of jealousy he’d get sometimes when Ashley and Darren joked about something he didn’t know, or shared a look like they were keeping a secret from him. 

He didn’t know why he got so jealous. Darren wasn’t only _his_ friend. The guy was pretty much friends with anyone, and it was only with Ashley that the stupid feeling crawled underneath Chris’s skin. 

But then Darren would include him in the conversation, or let him in on the joke, or simply direct a smile at him, and all jealousy evaporated as if it had never been there to begin with. 

Chris didn’t like Darren. He didn’t. Well, he _liked_ him, but not beyond the friendship line. Not even a tiny little crush. Otherwise, a red tally mark would have appeared on Chris’s wrist, and his wrist had been bare ever since the last tally mark—the last guy he had ever had a goddamn crush on—had disappeared back in his junior year of high school. 

At least these stupid tally marks were useful when it came to figuring out his own feelings. 

Still, the jealousy made him feel sick to his stomach, but the relief he felt whenever Darren’s attention was back on him made him feel even worse about being relieved. 

*

Chris was finishing his essay on copyright infringement for his Law class when he got a text from Darren.

_Hey, we still up for brunch at 12 tomorrow?_

Chris took his phone and replied to the text.

_Ashley said she couldn’t come._

_D: is everything okay?_

_She only sent me the words ‘smd’ and said you’d understand?_

_Ah, soul mate drama. Still a bummer she can’t make it._

Chris wondered what kind of drama could come up between soul mates. He supposed it was the same as with any couple, except that you knew that you and your soul mate would never split up.

How nice it must be.

_You still coming though?_

_Yep,_ Chris texted Darren. _As long as I finish my Law essay tonight._

_DUDE. You’ve been at work since like midday. You don’t have to turn it in until Friday, what’s the rush?_

_I’ve got a whole other ton of work to do for English and my French Literature class, and I don’t wanna pile it all up this week._

_Hey! You wrote ‘wanna’! Are you finally loosening up, Christopher?_

Chris narrowed his eyes at the screen. Damn it. He’d hoped autocorrect would change the contraction to _want to_ , but that hadn’t happened.

 _You’re rubbing off on me,_ Chris texted. 

_Good,_ Darren replied. Chris didn’t say any other message, and neither did Darren. So Chris finally finished his essay at around two in the morning and went to sleep.

*

When Chris woke up that chilly November morning, almost a month away from the end of his first semester in college, he stretched his arms over his head and rubbed the sleep off his eyes. He looked at the new tally mark on his wrist—a black one at that—and tried to blink the rest of his drowsiness off. Huh. A black tally mark. He’d never had one of those before, he’d only had red ones that had eventually faded from his skin. He looked at his phone and lied back down on his mattress. His alarm wouldn’t go off for another hour. And Darren wouldn’t pick him up until an hour after that.

Chris nearly jumped out of bed.

He sat straight up and extended his left arm right in front of him. He pinched his arm to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. He even took a pen he’d left on his bedside table and wrote underneath the black line, knowing that if this was a dream, he wouldn’t be able to read whatever he wrote.

But he wasn’t dreaming. The words _Are you awake?_ stared back at him, almost like an omen.

He had a black tally mark.

A _black_ tally mark.

Chris had never gotten black tally marks. Only red ones that he had hated to see, red tally marks he had been tempted to scrap off with a knife when he had first gotten them. But never a black one. 

He tried to make a mental list of every single student he’d met since he’d gotten to college. Black tally marks were incredibly… sensitive. His could belong to anyone he had spoken to since his last red tally mark had disappeared from his skin, to anyone he had made eye contact with. The only way to truly know who it belonged to was to wait for the name of his soul mate to appear right above the horizontal black line on his left wrist. 

He could try to rule out candidates. All the girls were out, that was for sure. So that left only the boys. So… about half of the campus’ population.

_Wonderful._

Chris immediately remembered the inexplicable jealousy he’d felt towards Ashley when she’d kissed Darren’s cheek the day they’d met, the inexplicable jealousy he felt towards her whenever she was affectionate in the slightest with Darren. He had never thought too much about it, had never wanted it to give it much importance, but now… now that this stupid black line had appeared on his wrist…

No. No, it didn’t mean anything. Nothing guaranteed that his new tally mark belonged to Darren. He wasn’t the only guy he had met and talked to during the semester, just the only one he actually got along with. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t. 

He didn’t know how long it would take for the name of his soul mate to appear. Sometimes one appeared right after the other one, but sometimes it took weeks, even _months_ , for someone to know who their soul mate was. How long would it take for him? 

How long would he have to wait?

He couldn’t focus on this right now. He’d simply have to wait. So Chris got out of bed and decided to get a shower now. 

*

“Everything okay?”

Chris looked up from his croissant and his cup of coffee. Darren’s eyes were narrowed at him, but the rest of his expression was as soft as it could be. 

“Why do you ask?”

“I’ve asked you if you finished your essay like four times,” Darren said. “And you’ve been like, spacing out for a while.”

“Oh,” Chris said, pulling down the sleeve of his sweater, even though it covered half of his hand already. He didn’t want to look at the black tally mark on his wrist, but at the same time he _wanted_ to look at it, to make sure he saw the name of his soul mate when it appeared on his skin, fearing it would vanish if he missed it. 

He tried not to look at Darren’s arms. He was wearing a sweater, too, but his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. No tally marks, red or black. 

“Yeah, I finished the essay. And everything’s okay with me.”

“Good,” Darren said, and a soft smile took over his mouth. “Any plans for Thanksgiving break?”

Chris groaned into his coffee. “I haven’t talked to my mom yet, but I’m pretty sure she wants me to go home to spend Thanksgiving with them.”

“Yeah, same here,” said Darren. “My brother called me the other day and asked me if I’d already checked bus tickets and everything. He said that Mom kept bugging him to call me because she didn’t want to bother me.”

“Aw,” Chris said. Darren softly kicked him under the table, and Chris felt as if Darren’s foot had conducted a lightning bolt through his entire body, like the first time he and Darren shook hands. He felt his face flush, and he just hoped he wasn’t blushing too noticeably. Darren said nothing, so Chris assumed his face still looked as pale as ever.

“Only two weeks left,” Darren muttered. Chris regained his composure, and he leaned his head back on the chair.

“Thank god we’ve only got two weeks left,” he groaned. “I love it here, of course, but I also love having a few days off every once in a while.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Chris risked another glance at Darren’s wrist. 

There was a black tally mark.

Chris leaned his entire body forward. Darren narrowed his eyes at him again.

“What’s wrong?” Chris pointed to Darren’s wrist, not trusting his voice to speak the words he had formed in his head without messing them up. Darren turned his arm so that he could see the inside of it, and his eyes widened when he saw the black tally mark that had appeared on his skin out of absolutely nowhere. 

Darren, for the first time since Chris had met him, was speechless.

For some reason, Chris found himself turning his own arm towards him and pulling up the sleeve until only he could see his own black tally mark. 

There was a word written above the black line.

_Darren Criss_

He sucked in a gasp.

“Chris…” Darren had gone back to look at his arm. They were both staring at their own limbs, keeping it from each other’s sight. “Tell me you have a name.”

“Do you have one?” Chris asked, fearing to hear the result, whether it was a yes or a no. 

“Yeah,” Darren said. “You?”

Chris swallowed through the knot in his throat. He thought he would have to wait for weeks until a stupid name popped up above his stupid black tally mark. He thought he’d spend Thanksgiving staring at his wrist, that Hannah would try to help him realize who it belonged to, that he’d tell her all about Darren and Ashley and maybe she’d help him figure out why he felt jealous of her, because she was a really nice girl and Darren was her friend and he was his friend and he had done everything he could to make Chris feel at home in this new environment where he’d thankfully had someone to hold on to since the very first day. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

“I…” Darren licked his lips. “I kind of wanna show you mine. But I don’t know if it’s the same as yours.”

“We can try,” Chris said. He’d heard a couple of stories about three soul mates, or sometimes even more than that, all of them having different names on their wrists. But he didn’t think that was the case for him and… and Darren.

Darren, whose name was now imprinted on his skin. 

“Okay.” Darren slowly nodded his head. “On three?”

“On three,” Chris said.

Neither of them actually said the words. They only mouthed the numbers, always staring right into each other’s eyes. Chris wanted to believe that his name would stare back at him when Darren turned his arm to show him his tally mark, but there was still that lingering doubt that had been with Chris ever since his first red tally mark had appeared: that stupid mark that meant _you might love him, but he will never love you back. And you better get used to it._

This tally mark said, _Maybe you don’t love him yet. But you will. And he’ll love you back, and you’ll learn to love each other as soul mates do._

They both mouthed, “Three.”

*

They saw their respective names.

_Chris Colfer._

_Darren Criss._

*

“Well, what do you know,” Darren said, although it sounded more like he was breathing the words out, finally allowing himself to speak them. His eyes were red around the edges, and he was smiling that bright smile that had almost blinded Chris the day they’d met. “I never thought my soul mate would be younger than me. And a Literature major, at that.”

“Seriously?” Chris said, letting out a wet laugh. “ _That’_ s what you’re concerned about?”

“I’m not concerned,” Darren argued. “Just a little surprised.”

“Well, at least your soul mate is not a self-entitled ninja.”

Darren’s laughter would’ve normally made Chris jump in his seat because of how loud it was. But it didn’t. Darren’s laughter was like music in his ears, like a tune he had spent his entire life listening to. Suddenly the entirety of Darren was strangely familiar, as if he were an old friend Chris thought he had forgotten but actually hadn’t.

He only offered a smile in return.

They didn’t love each other yet. At least, not as much as they eventually would. But they’d learn how to do it. They would fall in love with each other, learn how to love each other, learn how to spend the rest of their lives loving each other. There would be some “soul mate drama,” as Ashley had so nicely put it, because nothing was ever so easy and simple. But they would always come back to each other, of course they would. Chris knew it. Darren knew it. 

Because they were soul mates.

And that’s what soul mates do.


End file.
